I have been a bit of a broken record when it comes to my initial glee about my Garmin watch, then my sort of really pissed off complete turnaround after the watch started to fail and the company just outright refused to repair it.
I have spoken about that enough so I am not going to do it anymore.
My criteria that i had in mind when I was sourcing my next smartwatch / fitness band was that it needs to have good exercise tracking software, the ability to interface with strava and MyFitnessPal, and good heart rate monitoring capabilities that have been independently tested.
There were a number of items that made it to the shortlist, but when I broke it all down in the end, The Xiaomi 2 because of it's very affordable price and also the declared ability to swap batteries at will whether you are under warranty or not, sold me on this purchase.
There is a Redmi / Xioami store here in my city, but when looking on their website they would deliver to your address in the city for free with any purchase over $100 so I went for that option. This is a strange thing for someone who is into fitness to do, but I opted for it.
I was impressed with how quickly it arrived at my place, it was only a couple of hours after I hit the "buy now" button in fact. I guess that is the fast-paced world that we live in now. It was probably made a bit faster by the fact that it is the middle of the day when I made this purchase and the roads hadn't become gridlocked like they definitely will do a couple of times a day.
As if the company name was enough of a dead giveaway, they are very clear about the fact that this is a made in China product and I know a few people that are politically opposed to such purchases but I have no such feeling. If you make quality gear at a good price, I don't give half a damn what the country of origin is. What is more important to me, now that I have been through that rigmarole with Garmin was what the company policy was regarding replacement and repairs. Well, apparently Xiaomi has an absolutely stellar reputation as far as this is concerned and they address battery replacement directly, on their website and make it extremely clear that whether your warranty is valid or not has no bearing on whether or not they will change the battery or make other repairs, it only affects whether or not you have to pay for it. I think that this is basically what the original intention of warranties is at its core. Garmin seems to have the policy of "if you are out of warranty, we don't fix items at all" and that is a load of bull-hickey!
It comes with this magnetic USB charger that is pretty cool because when you set your watch down on it it "magically" clicks it into place where it needs to be. The watch is really lightweight and my only gripe about it is that it doesn't have a little strap where you can tuck in the extra wristband. Instead, they got all modern and there is a tuck under that rests against your wrist instead. You can see it in the top of the last picture. This was annoying at first, but maybe this is just how all watches are these days and I just wasn't paying attention. I'm in my 40's and have old habits... what else can I say?
The app worked really fast and didn't ask too much probing information such as they don't really get hung up on forcing you to register for anything - which is something I hate these days. I didn't even provide them with my name or even an email address. I guess the fact that you purchased their product is enough of a reason to get your foot in the door.
There wasn't a huge amount of options available for watch faces, but they did have some cool classic designs as well as ones that are more fitness oriented that always show your BPM, steps walked, and approximate number of calories burned so far in that day.
The charge on it lasts for several days and I have read that this can be extended to several WEEKS if you turn off notifications for incoming messages and what not. We'll see, it is kind of too early for me to make a call on that.
The menus are easy enough to navigate but most of it is stuff I am never going to use. So far I have used a timer and a stopwatch. It has google maps built in, but my eyes are not good enough to be capable of using something so small for navigation. It also has something called Google Assist that I didn't investigate because I am not going to be one of those loonies that is walking down the street talking to his watch.
One funny thing that is happening is because I have never had a Xiaomi device before or a fitness account with them, the watch is congratulating me on milestones constantly. My first walk it gave me kudos for my "longest walk ever!" at 100 meters, then continued to vibrate accolades to me every 100 meters after that. I turned this off after that initial walk but it was funny at the time.
It syncs without issues, it is effortless to set up, the watch was barely more than $100, and thus far the heart rate has been quite accurate and the only reason that I know this is because I have a blood pressure monitor in my house that does BPM as well. The Watch 2 is almost exactly correct but if it is wrong it is only off by a beat or two, nothing major.
So although it is far too early to really be judge and jury yet, I am extremely happy with this purchase so far.
I am one of those people that kind of need this sort of thing in my fitness life now because I have gotten used to it and I am just really happy that I don't have to have Garmin in the picture anymore.